Lulu Marketplace

In Black Jack Judy and the Crisco Kids, Alexis Rotella writes her husband's autobiography as if she had lived it herself. Replete with moments both magical and tragic, she provides a portrait of Italian American life at a time when there were still small farms in New York City, Italians were discriminated against, mothers plotted marriage, and all manner of relatives, friends, neighbors, and coworkers might appear at the dinner table. Each moment is rendered in tanka or kyoka, and occasionally prose or senryu. A piece of broken mirror the shape of Sicily, the curls from a little boy's haircut, a Christmas pizza with a star made of anchovies, and many other details paint a vivid picture of life long ago in a fairy tale country called the Bronx. —M. Kei, editor of Atlas Poetica: A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka